**6. New challenges and prospects for sugar industry in China**

There were about 5 million farms. The average farm size was about 0.27 ha and produced an average of 18 t cane. Most of planting, weeding, cultivation, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting were still done by hand. Fertilizer was used excessively, especially nitrogen, at three times over the world average, while the usage efficiency was low. It resulted in soil acidification and degradation as well as in pollution. Most of the sugarcane fields were dry slopes with infertile soil. The average available irrigation was less than 20%. Rainfall distribution was uneven and seasonal natural disasters such as drought and frost happened frequently.

### **6.1. Mechanization**

It is reported that only 5% of younger farmers born in 1990s still worked in the field. Mill stoppages are becoming more common because of nonavailability of canes, which are resulted from the shortage of harvesting labor, especially during Chinese Spring Festival. In addition, most of the new mills are of higher crushing capacity and many old mills are expanding their crushing capacities. Therefore, daily requirement of cane is increasing and hence greater demand for harvesting labor. Mechanization is inevitable and hence, adoption of mechanical

Compared to the countries, such as Australia, Brazil, USA, South Africa, and Cuba, China has less than 5% of sugarcane harvested by machine. The limitation of mechanical harvesters is use of the large mechanical harvesters in small, irregular and fragmented holdings, diversified cropping patterns, and limited resource capacity of small and marginal farmers in China. In the highly mechanical harvested countries, sugarcane is grown on large plantation scale in large farms owned by either mills or big farmers. The field capacity of mechanical cane

Sugarcane is a major commercial crop grown in tropical and subtropical regions of China, which is cultivated in about 1.3 million ha. During the last 100 years, the country has witnessed epidemics of various diseases like smut, pokkah boeng, red rot, wilt, and yellow leaf. The damage caused to sugarcane during each epidemic depends upon the nature of disease and spread of the susceptible varieties [24, 25]. The incidence of diseases is increasing at an alarming rate, and the yield is declining every year. About 10–15% of the national sugar produced is lost due to diseases in China [26]. Many sugarcane varieties were replaced due to their breakdown to a new disease or to a new pathogenic strain, such as mosaic, foliage dis-

Smut, pokkah boeng, and red rot remains to be the major fungal diseases of sugarcane in China, and *Phoma sorghina* var. *saccharum*, *Alternaria* sp. are the new fungal pathogens causing twisted leaves and brown leaf streak diseases in China, respectively [27–31]. Among the viral diseases, mosaic and yellow leaf syndrome are prevalent in almost all parts of the country. Bacterial diseases like ratoon stunting disease (RSD) are found to cause considerable yield loss in China, while leaf scald disease (LSD) and chlorotic streak disease are also identified to

Sugarcane is infested by 287 species of insect and noninsect pests. Out of them, 25 are major pests of sugarcane in China. Borers are major pests attacking sugarcane throughout the growth period, including *Tetramoera schistaceana*, *Chilo infuscatellus*, *C. venosatus,* and *Sesamia inferens*, in which *Tetramoera schistaceana* was the predominant species in China. The sugarcane borer causes the serious economic losses in China by tunneling that enters into the stalk for secondary invaders including bacterial and fungal diseases. More than 25% of sugarcane was infected in China, in some cases reaching as high as 98% of sugarcane. Severe incidences of shoot borer are noticed during water shortage and high temperatures. The other insects include white grubs, wireworms, and yellow sugarcane aphid and mites, including resistant cultivars, biological control agents, insect control and prevention, cultural practices, and

be caused by *Xanthomonas albilineans* and *Xanthomonas sacchari*, respectively [32].

harvesting of cane is also inevitable in future.

62 Sugarcane - Technology and Research

ease, and yellow leaf.

harvesters varies with the size (2.5–4 ha per day of 8 h).

**5.4. Comprehensive control of diseases, pests, and weeds**

In China, sugarcane mechanization is one of the greatest challenges due to the small farm holding and the over requirement of the harvested cane. Most of the sugarcane-growing areas are lack of over 160 horse powers tractors for soil preparation. Less than 30 cm of plow results in shallow root system and weak soil water-holding capacity, which leads to suffer from drought and lodging.

under 75 MT per hectare and sugar content is 12%. So, there is a long way and urgent issue to go for sugarcane production in China, including breeding cultivars for mechanical harvest

Sugarcane Production in China

65

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.73113

To date, no complete sugarcane genome sequence has been reported, which restricts the development of functional genomics and modern breeding. Omics-based sugarcane breeding will benefit sugarcane production by shortening breeding duration and increasing selection efficiency, including transgene, genomic edit, and marker-assisted selection [38–40]. They have created much enthusiasm to identify genetic components of traits, particularly quantitative traits, in Mendelian factors, and to monitor or direct their changes during breeding through omics-

[1] Liu XX, Wang SN, Zheng CF. 2015-2030 Chinese sugar consumption forecasting and

[2] Li YR, Yang LT. Sugarcane agriculture and sugar industry in China. Sugar Tech. 2015;

[3] Wei YA, Li YR. Status and trends of sugar industry in China. Sugar Tech. 2006;**8**(1):10-15 [4] Tan YM, Hong HE. Sugarcane improvement in Guangxi and perspectives. Sugar Tech.

[5] Liu XX, Chen RK, Zheng CF. Changes of Chinese sugar market under the background of

[6] Chen RK et al. Modern sugarcane genetics and breeding. In: Chen RK, editor. Beijing:

[7] Gilbert RA, Shine JR, Miller JD, Rice RW, Rainbolt CR. The effect of genotype, environment and time of harvest on sugarcane yields in Florida, USA. Field Crops Research. 2006;

[8] Lin Y, Deng Z, Deng H. Overview of sugarcane breeding in mainland China. In: Proc.

[9] Wu CW, Zhao PF, Liu JY, Zhao J, Liu JY, Hou CX, Xia HM, Chen XK. Breeding potential of ROC varieties. In: Meeting the Challenges of Sugar Crops and Integrated Industries

and planting sugarcane at economical and efficient production.

Muqing Zhang\* and Muralidharan Govindaraju

\*Address all correspondence to: mqzhang@ufl.edu

College of Agriculture Science, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

demand gap analysis. Agricultural Outlook. 2013;**2**:71-75

changing for 63 years. Sugar Crops of China. 2013;**1**:68-70

China Agriculture Press; 2010. 1-3 p

Int. Soc. Sugar Cane Technol. Vol. 27. 2010

based selection.

**Author details**

**References**

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